PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications with PHP [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by David Medinets (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
David Medinets's principal task in PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications is to find common ground for a discussion of PHP3, the database-interfacing module for the Apache Web server. Unfortunately, his task is subverted by PHP3's complexity.

In principle, PHP3's Perl-like script slides into HTML. When accessed by a browser, the code is interpreted by the Apache server, building a Web page out of data pulled from an SQL database through Apache's PHP3 module. The centrality of PHP3 in linking the user to the database is clear, but the stability of a uniform PHP3 implementation in an intrinsically heterogeneous Linux/Unix environment is so problematic as to be prohibitive.

To be fair, Medinets's PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications is a thoughtfully constructed book, but it sends mixed signals about whether it will enter the fray of PHP3 module support. Medinets's 20-page line-by-line description of building PHP3 begins with guidelines on how to make a new gcc compiler. Safe to ignore? Maybe not, because his Apache server-build instructions should be followed verbatim. A clean build and test on a generic Linux distribution is a multi-day effort because essential environment variables aren't documented--neither by Medinets nor by the PHP3 development team. Dynamical loading of the PHP3 module (the modern standard for module handling) is itself a subject of strongly worded statements in the newsgroups. Medinets has no comment on this show-stopping issue.

The book consists of didactic chapters on data manipulation, regular expressions, basic object-orientation, the CGI interface, and XML, all of which get interspersed with task-oriented interludes on connecting to databases, maintaining lists, creating HTML modules, and managing concurrent access. Over 100 pages of appendices provide SQL and PHP function references and Internet resources.

But the PHP3 development team must stabilize its interfaces before any single-source tract will suffice. Until then, readers must make personal commitments to read all available documentation. For the fearless few who venture into the PHP3 backcountry, Medinets offers an errata page at www.mtolive.com/phpbook to help with orientation. Active PHP3 mailing lists (www.php3.org) contain questions and answers, which are disparaging and hyperbolic but occasionally helpful.

The PHP3 developers have an outpost with a stable platform, and Medinets is safe at the outpost, but his smoke signals are too far away and the winds too variable for him to be of much help to us yet. --Peter Leopold

Product Description
Usage of PHP--cross-platform, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language--is rising by 100,000 domains per month. First PHP reference on market, and it contains more code examples with more comments than any other UNIX book. Provides UNIX programmers with all the necessary tools to build dynamic Web applications and databases from open-source software. CD-ROM includes Red Hat Linux 6.0 operating system, award-winning MySQL database engine, code listings, sample applications, software documentation, and much more.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (October 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071353429
• ISBN-13: 978-0071353427
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,629,294 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great PHP3 book for building dynamic database applications!, November 29, 1999

By	Silicon Ghost (USA) - See all my reviews

I use PHP3 and mySQL extensively on my vtfood.com/trains web site, but up until now, it has been hard to find a well rounded PHP3 book.

This book covers everything from installing PHP, understanding all aspects of PHP, connecting to databases (such as mySQL), pattern matching, working with CGI, XML, and many other goodies.

I am a fairly experienced PHP programmer, but this book has shown me several advanced tricks that I didn't know about, mostly due to lack of time to research these types of things on my own.

If you are a beginner, this book is perfect for you because the technical topics are covered in a straightforward, non-technical manner with lots of sample code to learn from.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Rough start, January 14, 2000

By A Customer

Unfortunately, I expected the accompanying CD containing mysql, apache, php, etc., to be useful. Instead, the .tar files wouldn't compile without errors (I tried them on 2 different machines), and the my_ODBC tarball is actually for Windows. I ended up downloading the .tar's which then compiled flawlessly.

Now that I've gotten past the installation (no thanks to the book), I'm finding typos in the sample code. Grrrrrr.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something for everyone but not enough detail for reference, January 11, 2000

By	Eric Hwang (Edmonds, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you're like me, you like to dive right in and start coding immediately to see what can be done. To do that, one needs a good reference on the available functions, syntax, etc. That's not what you'll get with Medinets' book.

While it does have a lots of useful information for beginning programmers and developers using MySQL and XML, it lacks depth. The book tries to cover too much territory and as a result fails to deliver enough useful information to make PHP accessible to all programmers.

There are plenty of code examples but they often refer to code used in previous chapters. I like to use books such as this as a reference and having to constantly cross-reference to other snippets of code is time consuming. I guess if I sat and read the book cover to cover, this would be less of a problem. However, most of the book is so rudimentary for most experienced programmers you would probably skim through it to get to what you need to know.

The most frustrating part of trying to really 'use' this book is that there is no function reference. Just a list of the functions without any parameter references or anything. I end up going to the PHP web site and getting more useful information online than in the book.

If not for some of the information on pattern matching, SQL and PHP installation, this book would have little value for me.